The Best Cool-Toned Lip Liners, Tested and Reviewed by <i><em>Bazaar</em></i>’s Beauty Director
My hunt for lip liners that never read warm or orange led me to these seven favorites
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
Cool-toned lip liner is having a moment — and not a quiet one. The difference between a lip look that reads intentional and one that reads finished often comes down to a single pencil in the right shade. Think mauves, taupe browns, cool pinks, and blue-based nudes — the kind of shades that make your teeth look whiter and your complexion look sharper without any additional effort.
According to Harper's Bazaar, the options worth your attention span a wide price range, starting with the e.l.f. Cream Glide Lip Liner in Espresso Martini at just $2 — a cool taupe that punches well above its drugstore weight. At the other end of the spectrum, Mary Phillips's Overliner Lip Liner Pencil was literally designed for overlining, with a shade range built around cool naturals like the taupe-brown Tease and the pink-nude French Exit. The added peptides, hyaluronic acid, and vitamin E don't hurt either. Saie's Lip Liner 101 in Twist — a mauve nude loaded with meadowfoam oil, jojoba, and shea butter — earns its spot as a daily-use staple that lasts for hours and pairs beautifully under berry or mauve lip products.
The Cult Shades That Explain Themselves
Some of these picks have history. M.A.C's Cool Spice exists specifically because Spice — the legendary '90s supermodel pencil — has quietly shifted warmer over the years (makeup historians noticed). Cool Spice corrects that: same long-wearing precision, deeper cool brown-mauve payoff. Then there's Maybelline's Gone Greige, the most universally recommended shade for anyone chasing a true cool-toned '90s brown lip, available at any drugstore. The only drawback? A twist-up format instead of a sharpenable pencil, which limits the precision. For the comfort obsessives, Summer Fridays' SoftLine Lip Liner in Sugar — a cool pink with a carnauba-candelilla wax base, hyaluronic filling spheres, and coconut-jojoba oils — is the softest formula tested. It blends with a finger, wears shorter than most, and is worth every second of reapplication.
The real conversation starter right now is Charlotte Tilbury's Longwear Colorful Lip Liner in Pink Frosting. Previously unavailable in the US, it landed at Sephora, went viral on TikTok as "the most beautiful cool-toned pink mauve-y lip liner to ever exist," and promptly sold out. Set a restock alert and move on with your life.
The right cool-toned liner doesn't just define your lips — it reframes your entire face.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
